Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Spotlight - Red and the Wolf by Laura Lee Nutt

They said Little Red
Riding Hood lived happily ever after. They lied.

Six years after the attack at her grandmother’s cottage,
Blanchette still wilts at the sound of a wolf’s howl. The scent of pine rising
from the Black Forest surrounding her home is a constant reminder of the
beast’s assault and the injury it left on her finger. After years spent hiding
away, Blanchette’s world tilts when she wakes--naked and without memory of the
previous night--in the forest, instead of behind the safety of her closed
shutters.

Since rescuing Blanchette and her grandmother, huntsman
Heinrich has befriended her family by day, and keeps watch as a powerful wolf
over his territory by night. Sinister otherworldly creatures constantly
threaten his domain and the human village he protects.

When the emperor sends a hunter to investigate the attack
and slay any inhuman beings, Heinrich must tread carefully and protect not only
himself, but his newly-discovered mate, who prowls the moonlit nights alongside
him. He must also determine who is responsible for a string of murdered
villagers, proving he can control his lupine nature and offer protection to the
village, rather than danger.

In elementary school, Laura Lee Nutt checked out every fairy
tale in the library so often, if she picked something else, it was cause for
curiosity. Even into adulthood, she nurtured her imagination with stories of
fairies, true love, monsters, especially werewolves, and the fantastic, but she
wondered what happened after “happily ever after.”

This curiosity and catching an illness one chill winter day
brought her before a blank computer screen, desperately desiring to write
something new. Heinrich, Blanchette, and Karl swiftly spun the tale you just
read. Laura feverishly typed, barely fast enough to keep up.

Once Red and the Wolf was born, other stories coalesced in
Laura’s mind, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, all
asking the same questions: What might happen if the end of these tales wasn’t
really the end? What were these characters’ lives really like after the
harrowing events of the fairy tale? What if achieving true love and happiness
required something extra? Thus came the idea for this series, Embracing Ever
After, where achieving true love requires something special and happily ever
after isn’t really the end.

Herr Kaismann’s soul-scouring gaze left Blanchette certain
the man had memorized her every detail. He showed no regard for Herr Jaeger’s
unconcealed aggression, yet an odd compassion in his gaze made her unsure
whether or not he would inspire nightmares. Usually in her terrorizing dreams,
strangers joined the wolf along the shaded woodland path where the flowers
dripped fat drops of blood when she plucked them.

Breaking his stare and shifting his attention to Herr
Jaeger, Herr Kaismann said, “I thought the girl was blond.”

“What?” Herr Jaeger asked, incredulous. “What does the color
of Blanchette’s hair or your being some--” Herr Jaeger bit off whatever he had
originally intended to say and glanced at her as if remembering she still clung
to him. “What does any of this have to do with Fraulein Blanchette?”

Herr Jaeger glanced at her, scowled, gray eyes igniting with
the comforting protective anger of a man defending his woman. He shifted and
turned on Herr Kaismann. “You speak of nothing more than a child’s tale. Do not
harass our young women in its name.”

Only, it was true, at least in part. How had the man found
her out of all the girls in the Holy Roman Empire? In the world? How had he
realized she was the girl to whom the tales referred?

A thin smile turned Herr Kaismann’s lips. He stepped forward
so less than a pace remained between the two men. “The emperor and I find the
prospect of such simple stories being pure fancy rather…unbelievable. At the
heart of every fable or children’s tale lies a grain of truth. In discovering
it, we reveal the real danger. We cannot have man-eating wolves running loose,
now can we?”